Answering James Clear

I finished James Clear's Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones about 16 months ago, as a put down in my Goodreads profile (Thanks for showing me Goodreads, Alec 🙂). The book itself is filled with practical tips which - unfortunately - leaves little room for explanation of the scientific basis behind the tips. Nevertheless, reader’s of James' texts find them incredibly helpful, as indicated by the rating of the book.

James’ name got stuck to my brain. When I came across his weekly newsletter "3-2-1 Thursday", I thought it might be worth a try. Here's the website where you subscribe, I have no affiliation to James Clear, just find the newsletter concise and thought-provoking and recommend you have a look. It won't hurt to try it out.

In all transparency, I haven’t been consistent in reading the newsletter since I subscribed, even though I enjoy the posts when I eventually read them. In particular, I enjoy the questions that are given at the end of the newsletter.

I therefore thought, I might as well use the freedom of my own blog to answer the newsletter questions here. This brings the benefit of

1. Consistency. Unfortunately, the weekly, external schedule itself didn’t make me read it. However, if I have the external schedule + the posts themselves make content for my blog, I hypothesise that it can give me the right push to read and ponder upon the questions regularly
2. Value for me = potential value for others. If I find it interesting, why not share it with others?

In the week 33 edition, 2022, James ends the letter by asking:

Here's a simple question to ask before jumping into "all the work" you have to do: What will happen if I don't do this?

I follow up on this question in my next post, here's the link to that.